Bullying grabs global attention

Officials from around the world work to stem the effects of bullying in cyberspace and on the playground.

May 31, 2011|By CNN

The guilty pleas of two students in a Massachusetts school harassment case recently thrust the spotlight back on bullying in the United States, but the issue is also drawing more attention beyond America's borders.

France's education minister made national headlines recently when he announced plans to combat bullying by shutting down Facebook accounts of students who harass their classmates.

Mexican legislators approved a new anti-bullying measure this year. And debates on the topic surged in Brazil after a gunman who killed 12 students at a school in Rio de Janeiro in April said in a homemade video that bullying was one of his motives.

Across the United States, 19.9 percent of students in grades 9 through 12 say they were victims of bullying on school property over a one-year period, according to a 2009 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey of a representative sample of United States youth.

But bullying is a global issue, according to the United Nations Children's Fund.

About a third of students surveyed in countries from Argentina to Zimbabwe said they had been bullied recently, UNICEF said in a 2006 report, citing two global studies on the issue.

"The most common forms of bullying are verbal and, if left unchecked, verbal bullying can lead to extreme violence," the report on violence against children said. The study also notes that cellphones and the Internet provide "new opportunities for bullying."

France focused on the issue in a two-day conference earlier this year, culminating with Education Minister Luc Chatel's announcement of the government's new partnership with Facebook.

"The solution is simple. We will single out systematically the students who have been bullying on this network, and they will see their accounts closed," he said. "For the more serious cases, we will ensure that the families of student victims have a system to file complaints, and this will be a partnership with the central office fighting cybercrimes."

In a statement, Facebook described bullying prevention as an "important issue," pledging to help promote online safety.

Government officials in Mexico have taken a different approach: changing education laws to require federal, state and city authorities to implement policies to identify, prevent, control and stop bullying.

"It is a phenomenon that, if not addressed in time, becomes a problem of health, security and education," Mexican lawmaker Jaime Arturo Vazquez Aguilar said.

"We must avoid, at all costs," Chatel said, "that one day a student prefers to die rather to be in a school where he is harassed, without our schools doing anything about it."

Is your kid a bully?

Stopbullying.gov is the U.S. government website devoted to helping families prevent bullying, as well as cope with bullies. Here are warning signs that your child might be bullying others: